Rafael Lozano-Hemmer Turns Park Avenue Tunnel Into An Audiovisual Party

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer lines NYC's Park Avenue Tunnel with hundreds of lights and speakers to create an interactive public artwork.

by The Creators Project

August 9, 2013, 6:52pm

In its nearly two hundred year history, Park Avenue Tunnel has never been open to the public. Not until Rafael Lozano-Hemmer turned it into a interactive artwork with his installation Voice Tunnel, part of the DOT Summer Streets event held annually in New York City. Seven miles of this subterranean road were closed to vehicles and instead its walls were lined with 300 theatrical spotlights and 150 speakers for an audiovisual public performance, a "concert of voices."

The lights and sounds emitted are controlled by members of the public who speak into an intercom in the middle of the tunnel—what they say is then transformed into cascading light and sound that echo along the walls. "What we're doing is a very straight mapping of voice into light," notes Lozano-Hemmer in the video above. "And the merit of this particular interaction is to make it architectural, to make it into a narrative. The tunnel itself, its linearity, helps you sort of go from story to story, almost as if you were able to tune into people's different realities."

The light corresponds with the intensity of the person's voice, which is then looped in both the lights and through the speakers. As more and more people leave a message, the older recordings get pushed down from the middle to the ends of the tunnel until they finally disappear. 75 people's messages can be in the tunnel at any one time.

As well as being a place where New Yorkers and visitors to the city can explore a usually forbidden space and shout loudly, the strobe-like effect of the rippling light turns the tunnel into an urban party, a place where "you are the show."

Check out some GIFs of the project below.